Travel

Ho Chi Minh City: A hidden legacy of war

For those of us who are old enough to remember when Ho Chi Minh
City was called Saigon the name will forever be linked to the Vietnam war or,
as the Vietnamese call it, the American war. It’s been 43 years since the first
GIs landed in Da Nang on March 8, 1965 and 33 years since the last U.S.
helicopter took off from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon and fled to the
safety of an American warship. During that 33 years Vietnam, a divided and
war-ravaged country, has rebuilt its shattered infrastructure, resolved its
political differences, and emerged as one of Southeast Asia’s most successful
economic powers. Except for a scattering of war memorials and museums the legacy
of the American war has been largely eclipsed by Vietnam’s surging market
economy.

On our 2,800 km journey from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City we saw
only a few relics of the American War, always from the Vietnamese perspective.
A plaque beside the wreckage of a B52 bomber in an upscale Hanoi neighbourhood
pays tribute to the skill of the gunners who brought it down. The burned out
shell of an American tank commemorates the Vietnamese patriot who gave his life
to destroy it, and the occasional memorial to Uncle Ho celebrates the ultimate
victory of his communist resistance fighters over “foreign aggressive forces.”

As a tourist it would be possible to travel through modern
Vietnam without seeing any evidence of that devastating conflict. But the scars
are there, just out of sight, and ignoring them is to ignore some of modern
history’s most compelling lessons about the futility of war. Any political
leader who even contemplates resorting to military intervention in another
country should first be required to visit the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi
Minh City. Behind the usual array of tanks, fighter aircraft, and ordnance the
museum’s eight thematic exhibits focus on the human side of the war as seen by
the Vietnamese.

Using photographs, text, and videos the displays document in
horrific detail the brutality of the French colonial occupation, the struggle
for independence, and the tragic intervention of the U.S. with its
state-of-the-art weaponry. The statistics are mind-boggling — three million
Vietnamese (mostly civilians) killed and two million wounded. The U.S. used 14
million tons of munitions in Vietnam, seven times the amount used in WW2.
Seventy million litres of toxic chemicals, including agent orange, were dumped
onto the ground, destroying over 20,000 sq km of forest and agricultural land.
Napalm and huge BLU-82 seismic bombs were deployed against both military
targets and the environment in an effort to defoliate the jungle and expose the
enemy.